


Kith

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Category: Dominion (TV)
Genre: Cuddling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Wing cuddling, set between S206 and S207
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-16
Updated: 2015-08-16
Packaged: 2018-04-15 02:31:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4589661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“He has us, both.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“And he does not understand the bond we share,” Gabriel insists softly. “He does not understand that the waning strength of one is fed by the other. He could keep us here decades and we will not fall to him. We will grow stronger. We will grow our wrath and cultivate it. And Father help him if he sees fit to do so, when He returns.”</i>
</p><p>Set just after the end of Reap of the Whirlwind (2.06)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kith

**Author's Note:**

> _“An evil man seeks only rebellion, and a cruel messenger will be sent against him.”_

_Michael._

Darkness holds him, but he presses upward against the solid ceiling. There is no exit and he is drowning, no split in the ice through which he can break. Lungs made mortal shudder stiff. His heart squeezes, an unyielding fist pulling it from his chest. And still he searches, still he follows -

_Michael._

A light pierces through the black. The same illumination that called to him once from across the void and yanked him gasping from the void beyond creation. The same luminous glow that brought him into being when he was nothing.

Michael reaches, and he pulls. Hands flat against the floor, he raises with a gasp and fills his body with air and fire and that voice, that voice that has always beckoned him and from which he could never stray. Eyes wide, he stares at the pool of darkness dripping from him and thickening on the floor below, touching numb fingers to his face to find its source.

“Michael.”

Gabriel’s voice has always been patient, even then, even now, and Michael allows it to fill him with light and warmth, allows himself to settle to the floor again and breathe, now that he can again.

“Breathe, little one,” Gabriel tells him, and it’s the unfamiliar clank of metal, rather than the soft unfurling of wings, that brings Michael’s eyes open. He curls tighter against the floor, turning to his side to seek beyond the blur of his own vision. The blood of the body he has chosen cools cloying against his cheek, and as the eddies of his dizziness smooth, it is Gabriel who comes into focus.

As he did so long ago, when he grasped Michael’s hand and pulled him from the shadows.

As he did so long ago, when nothingness gave way to being.

Thick chains hold him fast, Empyrean steel flashing blue in dim lights. Gabriel’s fingers clench and spread, as if even being bound he reaches for his brother, lying still upon the floor. Michael’s breath jerks once, unsteady, and he sighs out what air he has managed to take in.

“Brother,” Michael whispers, aching. “I tried.”

“You always do,” Gabriel sighs, and it is entirely fond. He watches Michael as he shifts, weak and tired against the floor, but the cruel marks from the net are gone, healed, so there is hope there, at least. Gabriel’s wings may be hammered down but Michael’s are strong yet. 

He settles carefully to his knees as Michael crawls closer. He cannot reach him, not to touch, not to soothe and heal and hold against him. But he is close enough when Michael presses his forehead to Gabriel’s knee and sighs shivering against it, fingers curling against him.

“You should have gone,” he murmurs. “I would have taken any cruelties to know you would be safely out of the city. Why did you not follow?”

Michael laughs, but there’s no joy in it. Not after what he’s seen - a brave young angel’s wings ripped from her back, the writing of their Father smote from skin, the man who bears both scar and sigil still fighting…

No. There is no delight in New Delphi.

And now this brutality. Michael lifts his eyes and finds only a smile, soft and pained. Gabriel’s fingers curl against his shackles and Michael shuts his eyes to the gentle look he’s given, nuzzling fierce against his brother’s leg.

“Because you would have stayed,” he says, “had I been where you are. You know it to be true, Gabriel, you know you wouldn’t let them -”

Agony sings sharp through his sides and Michael exhales hard, lips stiff with blood.

Gabriel hushes him, little more than sounds where he would rather have wings and hands and all of himself entirely to cover Michael and keep him safe. He thinks of gentle Michael, awaking sleepy-eyed and warm against him, crawling closer to nuzzle beneath Gabriel’s chin and nod off once more. He thinks of fierce Michael, brutal and indiscriminate, covered in blood, chest heaving as he stood over his vanquished foes.

He thinks of injured Michael, and laughing Michael, and every single thing that his little brother is and his heart swells with it.

“I will always choose you, you know that,” he reminds him, shifting enough to give even a semblance of a caress against the little angel against him. “Because you are stronger than me. You forget yourself and your strength. Fierce Michael.”

Despite the violence and torture, despite the exhaustion of torment and fear - fear! - Michael has felt, at this, he smiles. In Gabriel’s declarations is a gentleness afforded only between them; he may call him fierce but he knows the truth of it, the whole and form of Michael’s being. A tremor tugs loose an unsteady sigh as Michael lets his breath pool against Gabriel’s thigh, eyes shut.

“You told me not to,” Michael whispers, smile snaring sharp. “You told me to let him go, you said -”

“Michael, please.”

“No,” he says, through gritted teeth. “This is my fault. All of it. This entire place is blood on my hands.”

“Michael.” More patience, more softness. “Had you not, then, imagine the earth now, under his influence. With his choices. This is a small price, Michael, barely a scratch against the fabric of time. We will destroy him. He will not find light again.”

“He has us, both.”

“And he does not understand the bond we share,” Gabriel insists softly. “He does not understand that the waning strength of one is fed by the other. He could keep us here decades and we will not fall to him. We will grow stronger. We will grow our wrath and cultivate it. And Father help him if he sees fit to do so, when He returns.”

Again and again, through centuries, Michael has doubted. During times of Flood and times of peace, during unchecked violence and unfathomable passion, he has doubted his brother’s words. It is fitting that he does now, too, and that the scant consolation of awaiting their Father’s return is dim, indeed, against the encroaching dark.

But every time Michael has doubted, he has been proven wrong. In the savagery laid against Jericho when their Father would have destroyed Michael if not for Gabriel’s brutal intervention, in the exiling of Lyrae that felt so just at the time. Every time, Gabriel’s words have proved true.

He is the Messenger, the Heart that fuels them all.

Michael cannot doubt him now. To do so is surrender.

“I cannot free you,” Michael whispers, turning his cheek against Gabriel’s leg and seeking his eyes. “These chains are Empyrean, the bolts in your back - you suffer, brother, and I can do nothing.”

“You are here,” is all Gabriel tells him. For a while, they are quiet, neither saying anything or moving at all until Michael shifts to kneel, shifts to wrap his arms around Gabriel’s middle and press his forehead to his chest. Gabriel ducks his head to breathe him in, the electric crackling of ozone, as before a storm, his brother scared of them but born of them all at once. He lets his heart beat ease.

“Noma’s wings,” Michael sighs at last. “I don’t know if there is anyone in the world I would do that for but you.”

“And I would give you mine to replace them,.” Gabriel reminds him, as he had in that storm, as he had in that eyrie. He lifts his eyes to the wings still cruelly pinned to the wall, like a grotesque tapestry. They will wilt and wither, as Noma will herself. They will ache and die without her, as she without them. To sever the wings of an angel is the cruelest torture, and she had done that to herself, to save Alex.

Gabriel would not hesitate, if he thought removing his wings would allow Michael his freedom.

“Take a feather,” Gabriel tells him. “Set a spark. Heal your wounds, little brother.”

“As if I deserve -”

“Michael.”

Gabriel’s voice snaps like lightning and singes as it strikes. Whatever bonds Lyrae has laid on them cannot hold Gabriel’s words in check, as powerful as the day he was made to be the voice of their Father. Michael sighs and when he does a moan unfurls in his breath.

He will not argue this.

Michael shivers free his wings and lets them rest against the ground where he kneels. Bowed before his brother, as he has found himself time and again in subservience, he reaches back to seek a broken feather, tattered from the fray, and hisses as he snaps it loose of its moorings. From the pocket of his hooded shirt he draws the light that Alex brought to him.

Here, too, an illumination, that chases shadows flickering to their corners.

The feather alights and from dust to dust, Michael catches its remains in his palm. In a streak of ashen grey he rubs his hand along his face and ducks his head as if ashamed when his wounds mend themselves to wholeness.

Gabriel watches him, eyes hooded - nearly closed in exhaustion and pain, relief flooding cool through him that his brother had obeyed, that that pain is gone from him, at least, for now. He wishes he could protect him. Gabriel wishes he could do more than watch his brother tormented just to hurt him. He wishes.

“Much better,” he praises, enough that Michael’s smile comes almost unbidden to his lips. His wings shift a little more, and when Michael sits up tall they wrap around them both, holding them close, closeted in their own familiar safety.

“Don’t let your feathers brush the chains.”

“I know.”

They are close again. Michael presses into a nuzzle against Gabriel next, nose to nose, sigh to warm soft breath, and Gabriel wishes he could have his hands free just for this. Just so he could soothe the messy curls from Michael’s face.

And for Michael, this is rare. In centuries and centuries, aeons past, there have been scarce opportunities to shelter his brother as his brother has sheltered him. Michael’s lips part against Gabriel’s but they do not close again, sharing breath as though Michael’s blessed strength might be conferred and find its way beneath the rooted steel embedded deep in Gabriel’s back. He hurts. Michael feels his hurt. His shoulders ache and his wings ruffle wide as if to shed a sensation not his own.

But where their own shared empathy cannot intertwine relief, Michael attempts to make amends by wrapping his arms over Gabriel’s shoulders, clutching him close.

“I will not leave you,” Michael promises, fingers curled in Gabriel’s hair. “I will not abandon you to this, if it means the death of us both. Better than one, better than to be left alone.”

Gabriel makes a sound in distress, the very thought of Michael’s death enough to singe his skin like the steel had. He breathes in as Michael exhales and they sigh together, nuzzling soft. Michael’s death would be the death of Gabriel, Gabriel’s would be the death of Michael. But what harsher cruelty is there than to wile away the centuries alone until a broken heart and lack of strength finally takes their essence.

No.

They will not perish here, neither of them.

Gabriel turns his head enough to press his lips hard to Michael’s, pulling a sound from him as well, vulnerable and little. Careful fingers set to Gabriel’s cheeks, cool and still sticky with blood, soft with dust. Gabriel parts his lips as Michael parts his own. They taste metallic, they taste of their storm and the warmth of their eyrie, they taste of centuries and decades of shared breath.

They taste like life itself.

“You will go if you must," Gabriel murmurs.

“Don’t -”

“Michael.”

“Do not command me,” Michael sighs. “Not with this, Gabriel, I will not listen.”

“Stubborn boy,” Gabriel sighs, eyes closed and lips parting again to accept Michael’s ardent kisses. He does not want to command him to go, selfishly perhaps, but his company here is welcome. It is more than, easing Gabriel’s heart from the shuddering bursts that have rattled it against his ribs in the preceding hours. And what would it matter if Michael did go? The torture that Lyrae would inflict on Gabriel would be felt by Michael at any distance.

Better here, then, together.

Better a union to compound their strength than to be rendered helpless in separation.

Michael’s tongue tangles with his and Gabriel lets it, mouth pressed firm to Michael’s own. Gentle fingers slide Gabriel’s hair back from his face and frame his cheek, his brother’s kisses drifting towards the other. Beneath Gabriel’s arms, Michael wraps his wings, strong enough to support his weight as Michael lifts Gabriel from his feet enough to relieve the stabbing pressure of having his arms suspended.

“He’s watching,” Gabriel whispers, cheek to cheek with Michael, their breath soft against the other’s ear. Despite everything, he smiles and tilts his head to nuzzle. “I wonder what he makes of this.”

Michael nearly laughs, just a sigh. “Do you care?”

Gabriel just snorts. “I didn’t then, I hardly do now.”

There had always been envy, despite the way they could fight, Michael and Gabriel, their connection was unmistakable, it was impossible to ignore. Deeper than anything physical, a soul bond born of storms and darkness and melding together to create the light they now both are.

“He envies me,” Gabriel murmurs after a moment, delighting in the smile he feels from his brother, delighting in the way his arms squeeze him tighter and his palms spread wide against his back. “He envies you.”

“What is there to envy us now?”

Gabriel’s only answer is to kiss Michael’s cheek softly, eyes closed and lips pressed warm, an entirely intimate thing between them. A sigh and Gabriel opens his eyes to regard the room over Michael’s shoulder. Sealed and hard, a containment unit meant for just that. It would not be impossible to break free of it, if they were both of their full strength. If they had the time. If Gabriel was not tethered so.

Tucked in the embrace of arms and wings, Michael keeps his brother close and rests his head against his shoulder. Kisses touch steady as breath to Gabriel’s neck, a rhythmic pulse steady as their hearts have become. They are now in the valley of the shadow of death.

And together they will fear no evil.

“I have never needed protection,” Michael whispers. “Our Father’s right hand, who wields His weapons and metes out righteousness. War given form, and all the fierce brutality that it brings. I have never needed a shield.”

He lifts his eyes, and meets his brother’s lips when he turns toward him.

“And yet you gave me that,” Michael reminds him. “Time and again, my armor against our Father’s changeable moods and my own frenzies. Against swords and storms, you have guarded me. You will here, too. And I will rise wrathful to keep you whole, Gabriel.”

A low laugh, in agreement, not cruelty, and Gabriel raises his eyes to the cameras that point at them both from every end of the room. He wonders if Lyrae understands who he has hurt. He wonders if Lyrae understands who he has angered. Gabriel has destroyed angels for harming his brother before, uncaring for their rank, uncaring for anything but the fact that his little brother had been harmed.

Michael had leveled entirely cities in Gabriel’s name.

They are twins.

They are the same storm.

“I will always choose you, brother,” Gabriel says. He shifts, then, enough to take his weight from Michael’s wings and stand on his own, a careful movement as his mortal body aches from strain. He watches Michael rise to stand with him, before him, mighty wings spread and fierce and frightening, eyes bright and lips turned in that little smile that brightens his eyes and warms the delicate curve of his cheekbones.

And within Gabriel, Michael finds his strength.

Bringing his hood over his head, Michael shields their faces from the cameras. There are no more words needed for them, not when they can feel the other’s eternal love thrumming resonant in their own hearts. Instead, he keeps from prying eyes a lingering kiss and a little nuzzle, their smiles kept in secret.

The latch to the door echoes loud, and Michael turns to stand before his brother, wings spread wide.

**Author's Note:**

> _Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay…”_


End file.
